


Wherein Jim is the victim of a confluence of events

by kayliemalinza



Series: Rambleverse [12]
Category: Star Trek (2009)
Genre: F/M, Gen, Kayliemalinza's Rambleverse, Pre-Academy Years (Rambleverse Timeline)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-06-14
Updated: 2011-06-14
Packaged: 2017-11-03 15:30:12
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 933
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/382988
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kayliemalinza/pseuds/kayliemalinza
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It's almost as if the universe were conspiring to get Jim into the Academy at that particular time.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Wherein Jim is the victim of a confluence of events

Fuck what you heard, Jim didn't enroll in Starfleet because of Pike. Jim's a Starfleet brat and he's always known it. When he was three years old he slashed his foot open on a piece of a warp drive tracked into the cornfield from the shipyards, and that really meant something. Specifically, it meant that he had to take radiation treatment pills, which tasted like ass, and he was forever sentenced to wearing shoes outside, even in summer, and that sucked ass (Jim may have been young, but he was plenty experienced in the assness of the world; just ask Freud.)

In addition to having Starfleet in his blood, literally and figuratively (and immunologically--his vaccination records are a wonder to behold), Jim was tapped for this. It's _destiny_. After all, did Admiral Archer take anyone _else_ aside during Space Camp and tell them to try super hard in school so they could be an awesome space captain someday? No, he did not. And if anyone claims he did, they're a dirty filthy liar and they probably smell like ass. And their hair looks really stupid, and they suck on the monkey bars, and they are also totally lying about having an aunt who is a deep-sea shark wrangler, and their name is probably Jeremy Givens. Not that Jim holds grudges or anything, because future awesome space captains don't do that.

So Jim was always planning to join Starfleet, okay; he just wanted to wait a while, maybe sow a few wild oats first. If you had found him a week before Pike showed up and asked Jim if he would jetting off to the academy anytime soon, he'd have said no way. He had a shit-ton of things to do before getting chained to the uniform. In fact, that very week Jim and Uncle Frank were in the middle of planning a cross-country motorcycle trip, Jim was waiting for a call-back from that modeling agency, Winona had just hit another five-year active service mark and was due for some lengthy shore leave, the Riverside library had just gotten in a museum quality copy of Season Four of _Xena: Warrior Princess_ \--yes, real "DVDs" with a cardboard case and everything--and the long game Jim was playing with the green-eyed tattoo artist was on the verge of bearing fruit.

Just a couple of days later, though, Jim's to-do list took some hard hits: Uncle Frank got invited to live on an artist's commune in New Zealand, Winona's shore leave was pushed back indefinitely because of some "bureaucratic hiccup" she didn't explain very well, and the green-eyed tattoo artist's ex-boyfriend rolled back into town and declared his epic yearning love and remorse, etc. and the green-eyed tattoo artist went misty-eyed and closed up shop, leaving some poor schmuck with a half-inked grizzly bear on his left testicle (to be clear, Jim is not that poor schmuck; He'll do anything to get a girl's hand on his crotch, but he won't do that.)

Jim probably could have weathered all that, but then a pipe burst in his apartment and destroyed most of his worldly possessions. Jim isn't materialistic or anything but some things are just special, okay, sacred, even. Like books. Real books, made out paper. Trees _died_ for those books, and now--

It takes about three hours to salvage what he could and get it packed up to store in Uncle Frank's attic, then Jim wiped his eyes (they were wet because his apartment had flooded, okay) and decided to get the hell out of Riverside. He could do that cross-country trip on his own. He could reconnect with a few estranged exes, maybe, and see if that declaring love thing works across the board.

But then Jim hit up a bar that night--not his usual bar, which was inexplicably closed for deep cleaning--where he discovered that Starfleet finally changed the cadet uniform to something halfway palatable (don't ask what it looked like before) and that there exists a woman even feistier than the green-eyed tattoo artist. There was also the fact that Jim would be able to run circles around those meatheads on a fair field--and Starfleet loves pitting its cadets against each other on fair fields, and sometimes unfair ones just for shits and giggles--but that had a very, very small effect on Jim's final decision because, as mentioned before, awesome future space captains don't partake in petty feuds (epic feuds where the fates of an entire worlds hang in the balance, sure, but not petty ones.)

More than anything, Jim was simply overtaken by events, except that Jim isn't overtaken by anything, so it's more like he flipped the events on their back and made them scream his name. Pike was just in the right place at the right time, it seems, because otherwise he was just some random career captain looking to put a cherry on his latest clutch of recruits, and he gave the same spiel that Jim had heard a million times before. Pike did have a certain flair for it, Jim will admit, and he seemed to not know who Winona is, which was a nice change--not that Jim doesn't like being reminded of how awesome his mom is, but Winona sort of has the whole "Don't you want to follow in your mother's footsteps" thing _covered_ , thanks, and she even uses visual aids. So really, Pike had nothing to do with it.

However, Jim will allow that Pike's ship was pretty crucial. Mostly as destiny's apology for being such a motherfucker.


End file.
